Night Owl Cards

  The cards I am showing here are the polar opposite from the ones I showed on the last post, and that's the theme here. I'm conflicted. I've written many times how I enjoy all kinds of cards and I prefer having a somewhat-open mind toward cards. I don't want to be an old crank who shuns the shiny, and I don't want to be a modern magpie, attracted only to cards of the last 20, 30 years. I try to find things I like in most cards. However, I admit: the cards they're putting out these days? It's so much easier for me to find stuff wrong with those ones. This is the conflict. Why am I collecting cards where the flaws jump out at me? Why not collect cards that make me feel warm-and-fuzzy at all times and always? I battle with my desire to remain updated on the players on the field, especially on my favorite team, and the best way to do that for me -- it's always been this way -- is to collect their cards. So I put on a good front, but actually I'm really ...

The ultimate reward for a miscut card is that I treat it as its own distinct card. This doesn't always happen. I'm not a collector of miscuts, so often the card will end up in the dupes pile or (*gasp* *how could you?*) in the trash. For a miscut card to avoid that fate, it needs to provide something interesting outside of it being a mere cutting mistake. Enter this 1982 Topps card of Fernando Valenzuela sent to me by Bru .    It looks nice and normal on the front, a familiar shot of the first solo base card of Valenzuela that Topps had produced. Perhaps that alone would disqualify the card from being a distinct miscut. There is nothing about the front that tells you that there's something different. Oh, but the back: That is two separate players on the back of that card, and neither one of them is Valenzuela! In fact, there's more about Hal McRae and Reggie Jackson on the back of this card than Fernando. Even better (or worse) is that Valenzuela is carting around on th...

  A ranking post is the default setting on this blog. It's incredibly easy to rank things -- at least for me -- and some think it's the lazy way to address a topic or even as a blog post topic. In fact, I've read others say they really dislike rankings or top 10s, and to that I say: "well you've just hit No. 3 on my list of Opinions That Signify We Can Never Be Friends." Come on, ranking is fun! I've been writing lists since I was probably around 12. But I don't need to give you any history, if you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you've come across a ranking or two or three. And I don't apologize for it, some of them are among my most popular posts. I'm always in search of a way to rank baseball cards that interests me. I've done the Best of the '70s and Best of the '80s card countdowns and I'm in search of something similar (but different) to do in the future. I have nothing nearly as in depth right no...

  I complain a lot on here about how little patience people have these days -- from MLB insisting on artificially shortening games to Twitter feeding the release beast as Topps, Panini, etc., churn out new product every day for a panting audience.   But I'm getting worse in this area, too.   In real life, I'm known for my patience. I think I've mentioned this before, but my "hey, hey, relax " outlook is one of the main personality traits that landed me a wife. I am patient to a fault when it comes to checking out the latest restaurant, movie, technology, vehicle or social media site. My patience as a boss is very out of character with the ones who preceded me. I even waited to get the covid vaccine -- not because I'm some sort of wacked conspiracy theorist, but because I wanted to make sure the people who needed it got it first and I hate standing in lines. (So I guess I'm not very patient in the line-standing category). Even in the hobby I have the traits...

  I decided to order a blaster box of Topps Heritage recently. (Are we still calling them blasters?) I'm losing interesting in traveling the short distance to check out the empty card aisle -- it's like repeatedly visiting the same restaurant and discovering that it's still closed. I heard that the Topps site had not sold out of Heritage yet, so I put in my order and the box showed up a couple days ago.   I wanted a box to open for a few reasons:   1) Now that it has arrived in the 1970s, Heritage is very, very, super interesting and way cool to me. I could talk about the new set and compare it with the old set for much longer than your attention spans can stand.   2) Heritage is covering the 1972 Topps set this year. Come on, I just wrote about that set.   3) '72 is the set -- as I've mentioned many times -- that was considered "what a baseball card looks like" when I was a kid. Yeah, that sounds crazy. But it was the '70s. It made absolute sense the...